Wednesday, 6 February 2013

With all the hand-wringing over anonymous commenters and social-media trolls, you'd think the Internet is to blame for all the woes of humanity. After all, what could people do with their ugly, mean thoughts before they had Yelp, Reddit, or Tumblr to help broadcast them?

But as far back as the 1840s until the 1940s, they could send them in a Vinegar Valentine. For almost as long as Valentine's Day has been an insufferably sappy day celebrating romantic love, it's also been a day for telling everyone else exactly how much you don't love them - with an anonymous poem sent via snail mail.